Publishing an application - Build Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript - page 349

After you submit your application for certification, the related package is queued for the
automated tests. Automated tests are related to security and technical compliance of the application.
They are analogous to the certification tests you (should) have already run locally, and because
they're automatic, you'll know whether your app passed or was rejected within only a few hours.
If something goes wrong, you receive a prompt notification.
The most delicate part of the certification process is checking for content compliance. This task is
completed by a person, and may take up to seven days. After passing this test, the application goes
into Release mode. When you entered the application description, you were also given the chance to
decide about the release procedure. Application release can happen as soon as the application has
passed all tests, or at your earliest convenience. After the application is approved and you're ready
to publish it, the package moves to the signing phase, where its binary code is signed with a key to
prevent tampering and is then put on the output queue to become visible on the Windows Store
servers.
Sideloaded applications
The scenario described so far is likely the most frequent. However, there's another scenario that needs
to be addressed briefly. What if you don't want to publish the application to the store, but just make it
available to a well-known customer or customers?
Publishing an application to the Windows Store, whether a free or paid application, gives every
owner of a machine equipped with Windows 8 a chance to download and install your application. This
is desirable in most cases, but not in all cases.
Therefore, Windows 8 offers a different way to distribute applications, known as Enterprise
Sideloading . Not all Windows 8 machines are configured to support sideloaded applications, so by
taking this track, you are limiting your target audience to only owners of the Enterprise edition of
Windows 8. More basic versions of Windows 8 don't support sideloaded applications—only approved
applications that are downloaded and installed from the store. However, even basic Windows 8
machines can support sideloaded applications by purchasing ad hoc keys on a per machine basis.
In addition, for application sideloading to work, the target machines must be part of a domain that
enables the policy to “Allow all trusted apps to install.”
Summary
Overall, you have three options for writing applications that run on a Windows 8 machine. The first
is to write Windows desktop applications that also run on earlier versions of Windows. But if you
were doing that, the entire content of this topic would be useless to you. In fact, you would write
such applications against the .NET Framework using C# or Visual Basic as the primary programming
language.
The second alternative is the main thrust of what this topic has covered: writing Windows
Store applications that take advantage of both Windows RT and the Windows 8 modern UI.